Update on Recent Developments

Wyman Institute Update: June 24, 2003

We are pleased to inform you that the Hon. Martin Frost, U.S. Representative from Texas, has joined the Advisory Committee of the Wyman Institute.

A Father’s Day essay by Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff and associate director Dov Fischer, Esq., “Their Father Was an Unsung Hero of the Holocaust,” appeared in the Norwich (Connecticut) Bulletin on June 15 and the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California on June 13. It described the efforts of the Bingham family of Connecticut to raise public awareness about the heroism of their father, Hiram Bingham IV. As a U.S. consular official in France in 1940-1941, Bingham worked with Varian Fry, in defiance of the State Department, to provide visas and other protective documents to refugees. Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt, and Lion Feuchtwanger were among the individuals whom Fry and Bingham saved.

Academic Council member Prof. Alan L. Berger, Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University, will be teaching a two-week graduate seminar on Holocaust Literature for the Department of English at the University of Kansas.

Academic Council member Prof. David Weinberg, of Wayne State University, authored “Between America and Israel: The Quest for a Distinct European Jewish Identity in the Post-War Era,” in the Summer 2002 issue of Jewish Culture and History, and “Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Response on the European Continent in the Immediate Postwar Era,” in New Records – New Perspectives: Lectures on the Holocaust, the Birth of Israel and the Contemporary Middle East, ed. Shlomo Aronson (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2002). In addition, Prof. Weinberg lectured on “The Strange Alliance: Anti-Zionist and Antisemitic Rhetoric in Contemporary France,” at a conference on “The New Antisemitism,” Arizona State University, February 2003, and on “Issues in Post-war European Jewish Recovery,” at a seminar at the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, in April 2003.

Academic Council member Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, traveled to Australia in May on a lecture tour hosted by the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Committee and local Jewish organizations. He spoke in Perth,Melbourne, and Sydney, as well as to pupils in local Jewish schools, and gave numerous interviews to the media. On the way to Australia, Dr. Zuroff also lectured to students at the King David School in Johannesburg, briefed the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, and was interviewed on the “Jenny Crwys Williams Show,” one of the most popular radio shows in South Africa.

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State Dept Historian Rewrites Holocaust Record

A scholar in the State Department’s Office of the Historian has authored an essay defending U.S. consular officials who rejected visa applications from Jewish refugees in Vichy France in the 1940s, and minimizing the accomplishments of Hiram Bingham IV, a dissident consular official who helped Jews escape France and was punished by the State Department.

Wyman Comic Wins Silver Medal

Karski's Mission, which was authored by Wyman Institute director Rafael Medoff and illustrated by renowned comic book artist Dean Motter, was awarded the Silver Medal in the category of "Graphic Novel/Drawn Book – Drama/Documentary category."

Karski's Mission is based on the true story of Jan Karski (1914-2000), a Polish Catholic and member of the Polish Underground during World War II, who risked his life to bring Allied leaders his eyewitness account of the ongoing slaughter of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Karski's Mission, which was co-published by the Wyman Institute and the Jan Karski Educational Foundation, received additional support from Fundacja Edukacyjna Jana Karskiego, the Association of Friends of the Polish History Museum, Sigmund A. Rolat (chairman of the Wyman Institute's board of directors), Carole Bilina, and John McLees. With assistance from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, a Polish-language edition of Karski's Mission is now being used widely in schools in Poland.